By nature, I am a methodical person- I like to know the reasons why something is the way it is, how to tackle tasks in a very clear and practical way, any potential roadblocks (and what the response to those would be), and what the end goal is. During my first year here, I can confidently say those things were a huge deterrent to my success. I wouldn’t take action until I was 100% confident in what I was doing and I didn’t know how to ask the right questions in order to understand the “whys”, “hows”, and “whats”. The conversations I was having with both clients and candidates were lacking clarity, depth, and understanding, which lead to continual frustrations and failures. I wanted so badly to be successful and to represent JFC well and I felt that I was continually coming up short.

For me, failing was not an option; I wanted to make a name for myself while continuing to establish JFC as a competitor in this industry. Thankfully, I work with an incredibly supportive team so I was able to access countless trainings, have one-on-one conversations with my mentor, and spend a lot of time with my branch manager and select senior management. Having that access made all the difference- it allowed me to think about things differently and to take a new approach to my conversations, with that came a new approach to asking the right questions. This is an ever-developing skill but I think it’s safe to say there is a direct correlation between asking the right questions and having a higher placement retention. I was able to see a clear shift between simply staffing each position and recruiting/screening the right candidate(s) for each position. I ask better questions during the interview and really try to hear what the candidate is looking for; much the same, I ask more probing questions with clients in order to hear what really matters to them in the candidate(s) they choose.

In my experience, the key to success is to go after each learning experience, whether that’s a training you’ve already sat in on, to ask a senior manager if you can bend their ear over lunch, to have a conversation that intimidates you, to ask the same question a fourth time. Whenever you think you have it all figured out, I promise, you don’t. If you can allow yourself to learn from your failures and disappointments, you will be better for it.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

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“Do what we tell you and get a paycheck, healthcare, and retirement bucks. Do that long enough and eventually you’ll tell others around here what to do: Maybe everyone.” Those are the rules, right? That’s what you learned from the punches, and battle-scars that the hardest work and sharpest focus invited on your trip toward the C-Suite.

Okay, maybe when you strip away the context, that’s a little Sheldon Cooper-ish. Sheldon Cooper? You know the Ph.D. from Big Bang Theory who’s floating in an Asperger bubble which deafens him to either his own or other people’s emotions. Dr. Cooper is a highly functioning autistic who’s immersion in a super-specialized field of interest obscures what drives other people.

Fact is, that model worked. It was a paradigm for enterprise cultures that prospered because they laser-focused upon serving markets by creating goods and services in return for gold. This revenue provided paychecks, healthcare, and retirement bucks.

So? What’s changed?

Employees are increasingly becoming a market that enterprises must also please. Otherwise they lose access to the STEM technicians and specialized management professionals who allow an enterprise to serve customers with their goods and services. As the labor markets have moved away from a demand from brawn to a necessity for brain… Well, Dr. Sheldon Cooper’s begun to realize that the emotional drives of his colleagues are now part of succeeding in the super-specialized field of interest which defines modern market competition.

Increasingly labor-force entrants with productive skills want something more out of a job and especially management. Too quickly their appetites have been stereotyped by the Sheldon Cooper myopia of the past which dismisses these emerging workers as solely interested in trophies, instant gratification, or fast-tracking to the top. Their emotional cravings for flex-time, telecommuting, social significance, family time, interesting objectives, meaningful tasks, and continual feedback leave Sheldon Cooper cultures muttering… “These kids are good for nothing! They… they… don’t know the meaning of hard work!” Sound about right?

Shhhhh… Hear that? It’s the din of cultures clashing!

Look, the reality is not that younger generations are a challenge to hire and manage. Instead, too many executive suites have the wrong core belief about managing emerging workers. And being wrong about that core belief means every subsequent decision only makes things worse because every decision is ultimately tied to that belief.

Successful enterprise cultures must evolve and adapt with the workforce or risk irrelevance. After all, executives demand similar flexibility to the demands of their product markets, right? The reality is that the Millennials and Generation Y who characterize the emerging workforce are not the problem: Sheldon Cooper’s the problem. Too many of us manage in a narrow tunnel walled off from the emotional culture we create. Increasingly we must focus upon how employees feel: Yes, the emotional drivers.

Adaptive enterprise cultures are learning to identify, use, understand and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome internal challenges, and defuse conflicts. Succinctly, they learn to read their community’s signals and react appropriately to them. All of which are the components of effective EQ management. Meaning they are pricking the Sheldon Cooper Asperger bubble. They’re synthesizing that traditional management driver with the aspirations of emerging workers. This for relevancy in a world that blurs self gratification on the job with gratifications from ideals, families, and self awareness.

Is this affordable? Gallup’s “State of the American Workplace Poll” found that 70% of the nation’s employees are disengaged at work. They estimate that these disengaged employees cost the U.S. between $450 billion to $550 billion each year in lost productivity. A “Global Workforce Study” by Towers Watson showed only 48% of employees report that their top management is doing a good job of providing effective leadership. In the face of those sorts of metrics, is the Sheldon model still affordable, particularly in a world of out-sourcing, and off-shoring? Is it cost-efficient in a world of market competition without borders?

This is not some soft kumbaya movement. It’s real and the emerging workers are more mindful of it than most in today’s C suite. It’s unfortunate given the critical importance of emotional culture that EQ is rarely managed if managed at all. Unfortunate since it influences soft measures like employee engagement but also the hard measures like retaining top talent and financial performance.

Most of us over thirty years of age have barely heard of emotional intelligence (EQ). Raised in a Sheldon Cooper business culture we were never shown that feelings are primary drivers of behavior and thus we’ve ignored the drive of key emerging workers to shop for the employers who make deliberate attempts to harness this concept. In the increasingly competitive market for high-productivity talent, enterprises need to grow attention to emotional intelligence (EQ) and its effect on both the front and bottom lines.

It starts at the top, the executive suite. The old ways might still get you compliance but they will never let you maximize the productivity of focused attentions and commitment. Disregarding the feelings of others makes employees insensitive and indifferent. Which will permeate out to customers causing dominos to fall – turnover (employee and customer) creates a costly clatter.

Executives who invest in their EQ management are in fact investing in the overarching emotional culture of their company. Their front line employees blossom out of happiness and pride rather than wilt from boredom and anxiety. They perform to higher levels so the customers receive more positive experiences nurturing both profitability and growth.

EQ is the cure to Dr. Cooper’s management Asperger’s. Or at least it’s strategically dialing down the profit-distracting din of colliding cultures.

Article originally published in Lancaster Business2Business Magazine February 2016

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